[garply]

I feel like, fundamentally, the problem of piracy with digital goods is something like this:

I'm a wheat merchant. My store is located 10 minutes outside of town and I give people a fixed amount wheat in exchange for money. But one day there's a huge pile of relatively undefended wheat that people can just take for free (even if illegally) in the middle of town. Suddenly my wheat is no longer worth as much.

Seems pretty simple to me.

[randallsquared]

I think a better analogy is:

You're an apple merchant. You sell apples, which are generally better quality apples than the ones people can get elsewhere. However, some of those people have now begun planting apple trees from your apples' seeds, and thereby getting more of your apples without paying you for them. These apples still aren't quite as good on average as your apples, since sometimes they come with worms.

This situation wasn't terrible until recently, when someone invented a way to make apple trees grow faster, and now the time to grow an apple tree in someone's backyard from one of your seeds is halving every few years.

[garply]

I like that analogy.

It's interesting that we focused on different aspects of the quality of pirated goods. You assumed illegal copies are of worse quality than the original - and this can be true: that copy of Photoshop you grabbed illegally may well be carrying a Trojan.

But I don't think it's always that simple: A person can watch new TV episodes faster off of torrent sites than he/she can see them on Hulu, and without ads. I'm pretty sure the faster, ad-less version is more valuable than the original. Likewise, DRM-less MP3s are probably more valuable than locked ones from the original CD, etc.

[randallsquared]

I only added that in to be a bit more accurate; in general, I only think illegal copies are worse on average (meaning more of them have problems than "approved" copies have problems). I could continue quibbling by talking about movies copied via camera in the theater, but I won't bother; I actually do agree that in many areas the pirated copies are better all around than non-pirated copies.

The reason I felt compelled to give another analogy, though, was a another difference: the ease of making more apples / wheat / copies, in one's own backyard (or computer, as the case is). I felt that that was an essential part of the picture, missing from the wheat scenario. :)

[billswift]

By your example linux users pirate Windows and Macs since linux's free.